June 26, 2025
Accept and except sound almost exactly the same when you say them out loud, but they’re actually totally different words. They don’t mean the same thing at all, and mixing them up in your writing is a pretty big mistake. Read more…
April 10, 2025
Subject-verb agreement is easy enough on the surface: Singular subjects need singular verbs, and plural subjects need plural verbs. But things can get a little bit tricky when you start talking about multiple subjects, collective nouns, interference from predicate nouns, Read more…
Subjects and verbs are some of the most important elements in a sentence. If I’m being honest, they’re probably THE most important parts of a sentence—after all, you need both of them to even form the sentence in the first Read more…
March 15, 2025
Adverbs are the more complicated cousin of adjectives. Whereas adjectives serve a fairly straightforward purpose—they limit or describe a noun—adverbs have a more diverse range of functions. Their primary purpose is to modify verbs, but they can also modify adjectives, Read more…
“Preposition” is one of those grammar words that seems to be thrown around a lot but never actually clearly explained. Sometimes people seem to (incorrectly) use it as the catch-all: When all the other words in a sentence have been Read more…
March 10, 2025
Noun Definition Basically, a noun is a person, place, or thing. The “thing” category also covers animals, qualities (like “kindness”), and ideas (like “justice”). This is the largest category of words in English. What Do Nouns Do? In a sentence, Read more…
February 4, 2025
While researching for another article, I came across this entry in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage, which explains the word munch: “Copperud 1970, 1980 does not like munch when it is used of eating something that does not crunch.” Read more…
January 6, 2025
You know, I really wish there were just one hard-and-fast set of grammar rules that everyone agreed on and followed all the time. That’d make things much easier for writers, editors, students, and anyone learning English as a second language. Read more…
October 29, 2024
Doesn’t that just title sum up English grammar? “Here’s a rule, but it’s not quite always true…” It’s an unfortunate reality that the rules of English grammar are very much like swiss cheese: full of holes (and possibly a little Read more…
September 12, 2024
Why does “the brick old house” sound weird but “the old brick house” is fine? So many grammar rules are difficult to remember and even trickier to perfect, but this one is pretty much automatic for most native English speakers. Read more…